Review/Film; The Explosive Life of Frida Kahlo

By CARYN JAMES

Published: May 22, 1992

An hour is hardly enough time to do justice to the passionate life and art of Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter who seems about to jump off the canvases of her vibrant, fantastic self-portraits. Even more than her accessible art, Kahlo's explosive existence has made her something of a pop icon in recent years. That well-documented life is the subject of "Frida Kahlo: A Ribbon Around a Bomb," a part-documentary, part-performance film that opens today at Le Cinematographe.

When Kahlo was 18 years old, her abdomen was pierced by a piece of metal in a trolley accident, causing her to suffer endless pain and many operations until her death in 1954 at the age of 47. She married the painter Diego Rivera twice, and endured endless betrayals by him, including an affair with her sister. She retaliated with love affairs of her own, with both men and women. Throughout all this she painted a stream of self-portraits that splashed her psychology and emotions across the canvas in blunt symbols that are both primitive and surreal: a naked Kahlo bleeds profusely in a hospital bed that seems to float in space; several portraits show Rivera's face painted on Kahlo's forehead.

The director Ken Mandel takes a scattershot approach to this material. He weaves together interviews with people who knew Kahlo, several photographs and films of her, and many shots of her most familiar paintings. Most successfully, he includes excerpts of a theater piece by Abraham Oceransky called "The Diary of Frida Kahlo," presented by Teatro Dallas.

The documentary sections are extremely weak, because Kahlo's associates are not sufficiently identified, their often spurious opinions not put in any context. Surely the bloodiness of Kahlo's paintings cannot be traced simply to her one-time ambition to study medicine, as an interview subject claims.

But the dramatized episodes, based on Kahlo's diaries, are surprisingly effective. Most of this theater piece is a monologue performed by Cora Cardona, sometimes joined by Quigley Provost as a younger Kahlo. Ms. Cardona does not imitate Kahlo so much as bring the depths of that volcanic, tortured personality to life. Depicting Kahlo's reaction to her accident, she wraps a large chain around her leg and reveals both pain and astonishing strength as she says: "I am not dead. I am not sick. I am only broken."

Still, the film, whose subtitle comes from Andre Breton's description of Kahlo's art, is likely to be too shallow for anyone who knows her story and too sketchy for anyone unfamiliar with it. Ms. Cardona's trenchant performance hints at how illuminating this film might have been. Frida Kahlo A Ribbon Around a Bomb

Directed and edited by Ken Mandel; based on the play by Abraham Oceransky; director of photography, Jeff Hurst; music by John Bryant and Frank Hames; produced by Mr. Hurst, Mr. Mandel and Cora Cardona; a Roxie release. At Le Cinematographe, 15 Vandam Street, SoHo. Running time: 71 minutes. This film has no rating. Performed by: Cora Cardona, Quigley Provost and Costa Caglage.